Part Two - Free Fire

As we venture into part two of this book, Joe learns more about the case that he is sent to help out on.  He also learns his place in all of this, at the very bottom and not very welcomed.  This part of the book is not very long and nothing really exciting happens other than the little hike him and his partner go out on.  They went to the ranger station that McCann checked in at before he went out that morning.  They look at the signature log and find some information that was not stated in the report and decide to take a hike out to see the crime scene.  With both on guard and aware that they could possibly be putting themselves in danger due to the fact that everyone is aware that this is an area that anyone can commit a crime and get away with it.  With that said, they come upon the area that the environmentalists were camping and come across a man and his shotgun, but what none of them know is that Joe's friend Nate was hanging in the balance.  The outcome was not very good, causing Joe's female partner who is a ranger in the park to be scared out of her mind and the shooter about killed. 

Part One - Free Fire

The start of this book has pulled me in and has not let go or should I say I don't want to put it down.  The setting for this book is still in Wyoming as the others, but this particular book takes place in Yellowstone National Park.

Before I get into details on part one, I want to give you a little information on Yellowstone as stated in the book. Yellowstone was conceived by the Hayden Expedition in 1871 as the world's first national park.  It is a set aside of 2.2 million acres containing more than 10,000 thermal features, canyons, waterfalls, and wildlife.  Some of the sights in the park are Old Faithful, Mammoth Hot Springs, Norris Geyser Basin, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Lower and Upper Falls.  As a kid, Joe used to go to Yellowstone every year with his family.  It was his and his father's love for the park that made him want to be a game warden.

The start of the book takes place at Bechler River Ranger Station at Yellowstone National Park.  Clay McCann walked into the ranger station fully armed with weapons announcing that he just brutally killed four campers by Robinson Lake.  The ranger looks at him and tells him that law enforcement will be here any minute and does he want him to call him a lawyer.  He looks up and says, "I am a lawyer."

Now lets back up a little bit.  At the end of Plain Sight, Joe was fired.  Well, he is currently working on his father-in-law's ranch as a foreman ranch hand.  He and his wife Marybeth along with their two daughter's Sheridan and Lucy are staying there as well in the guest house.  One day while working on the fencing, some government vehicles approach the property asking to speak to Joe.  Joe goes back to the ranch house to find out what is going on.  Well, they have a position for him that they need help with.  They want him to go up to Yellowstone and help sort out the information on this murder that took place up there.  Joe takes the information and tells him that he needs to talk to his family about this and will get back to him.  Meanwhile, they give him the folder with all the information on the case.  When the time is right, Joe talks to his wife and is pretty happy that she said yes.  This is want he does, this is what he wants.

In reading into the information he asks his good friend Nate to join him.  He tells him a little about the case.  This guy, Clay McCann takes a hike into Yellowstone National Park armed with two SIG-Sauer P220 .45 ACP semiautomatic handguns and a Browning BT-99 Micro twelve-gauge shotgun.  Basically, this guy goes into this one part of the park, kills four campers, walks out a free man three months later.  The reasoning behind this is jurisdiction and venue, or what is called "vicinage."  Joe explains that there is a hidden loophole in the federal law.

Yellowstone is broken down by boundaries.  Boundaries drawn before Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana were granted statehood Joe goes on to explain.  The square border of Wyoming, which contained more than 92% of the park, north into Montana and west into Idaho.  There is approximately 260 square miles of Yellowstone in Montana, and approximately 50 in Idaho.  There is no state law in Yellowstone, it is only Federal Law.  Any crime that is committed there, the perpetrator is bound over under federal statues.  The trial will take place either inside the park at a courthouse in Mammoth Hot Springs, or the federal district court over in Cheyenne.  As stated in the book - "Article Three of the Constitution says the accused in entitled to a 'local trial,' meaning a venue in the state, and a 'jury trial' but does not say where the jury has to come from.  The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution specifies a 'local jury trial' - that's the vicinage.  With that said, the jury would have to be picked from the state Idaho and the district Wyoming because of the way the park overlaps into this area and these states.  Being that no one lives in this area, there is no trial and the guy walks committing "the perfect crime."  Sounds too good to be true.  That is where Joe comes in.

June - In Plain Sight

It is said that when it comes to the Scarlett brother's, you're either for Arlen or for Hank.  There is a third brother, but people usually leave him to his own business.

Joe's wife was asked by Arlen Scarlett to work for him as Marybeth has her own accounting business.  Joe wasn't happy about this as he wasn't for or against one over the other.

When Marybeth was with Arlen, she saw that he was a little distracted.  He kept looking at his phone.  When he got a phone call, he about jumped out of his skin.  He stepped outside to talk to his lawyer.  Marybeth looked on from inside the office.  When Arlen came back, he burst through the door yelling, "there was a secret will."  Apparently Opal liked to play Hank against Arlen and they both thought they were going to get the ranch.  This secret will that his lawyer found, states that Arlen will be getting the ranch.

At the Scarlett wing of the Twelve Sleep County Historical Society, Joe could see all the pro-Arlen and pro-Hank followers.

It was also at the ceremony that Joe recognized someone.  That someone is Bill Monroe.  The same guy that beat the crap out of Joe earlier in the book.

In doing his daily rounds, he heard the pop of a shot gun.  Grabbing his binoculars, he saw a man step out from behind the door and wave.  Bill Monroe. Antelope season was four months away.

Joe needs to get to the bottom of all this and figure out what all this is about.  Meanwhile back at the ranch, Bill Monroe or should I say John Keeley is making himself known.  Telling Hank who he really was and stopped Hank in his tracks.  Watching him like a hawk and just as he was about to turn around, John Keeley cut Hank's throat open.

As Joe and his buddy Nate approach the bank of the ranch via their boat, Nate notices someone standing in the rain.  It was Opal.  As they walked further up the bank, part of the embankment collapsed into the river.  Noticing something, Nate walks over and notices the bumper of a car.  Opal's Cadillac.

Walking through the house, they heard a moan from under the floor.  Recalling a cellar door, the guys go outside.  Recognizing the moan as they got close and realizing it was Wyatt Scarlett, the youngest brother.  What Joe saw next was very surprising, a taxidermy studio.

Wyatt sat on the floor holding his brother Arlen's head in his lap, but he was clearly dead.  Lying next to him was a man's entire arm.  Joe asked Wyatt what happened.  All he said is that his brother's are dead.  Joe asked him who did this and all Wyatt said was Bill Monroe.  He asked him where he is and he didn't know and then asked him if that was his arm.

Following the trail of blood, he found John Keeley slumped on the floor in the barn.  After a few exchanges of words even I was shocked at what Joe did.  He slowly raised his gun to John's head and pulled the trigger.

The ranch house and barn go up in flames killing all the brother's and also resulting in Joe loosing his job as the Twelve Sleep County game warden.  With all this unfolding at the end of the book and as the next one in line awaits as a continuation of this one, I am curious to see what lies ahead for Joe since he is no longer the game warden.

May - In Plain Sight

A month after Opal Scarlett was reported missing, her body still hasn't been found.  The question around town is where is she?  So far, they still believe it was Tommy Wayman who threw her in.  Some believe that as stubborn as she is, she swam to shore and is in hiding.

With the disappearance of Opal, the Thunderhead Ranch is in shambles if you will and sides and feuds amongst the brothers is heating up.

Did you ever feel like you were being watched?  Joe has the same feeling and that feeling came true when there was a noise outside.  The oldest daughter opened the door to find a Miller's weasel stuck to the front door with a steak knife.  Of course this has Joe puzzled.  With all of these books referencing back to other event's in earlier books, this was an animal that Joe dealt with and looks at all the people that he dealt with about the Miller's weasel.

The time came for Sheridan to have a sleepover at the Thunderhead Ranch, where her best friend lives.  Joe was not very happy about it with so much going on between the Scarlett brother's.  Sheridan was excited about the sleepover but when it came time to go to bed, she was having a hard time sleeping. After a while, she decided to get up and go to the bathroom.  She saw a light on downstairs.  She heard some voices outside and it was her friend's Uncle Arlen and Bill Monroe.  The kitchen looked like someone was making a sandwich.  She also noticed that the sharp knife in the kitchen matched the one that was stuck in the front door with the Miller's weasel.  AS the voices got closer, she panicked, grabbed the sharp knife, some water, and just as she was walking out of the kitchen, in walked her friend's Uncle Arlen and his friend Bill Monroe.

The name sound familiar to Sheridan as that was the name of the man who beat up her dad and worked for Hank Scarlett.  This puzzled Sheridan as Hand and Arlen both lived on the ranch but on different parts of the property.

The next morning, Sheridan woke up but Julie was still sleeping.  She took the binoculars that were on Julie's dresser and looked outside.  She was very surprised to see a slightly smiling face of a woman.  It was Opal Scarlett.

A few days later, Joe went outside to get the paper and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.  Looking around, he noticed four elk heads mounted on the fence posts in his front yard.  Who is doing this and why?

April - In Plain Sight

I love how C.J. splits up his book besides the chapters.  This will make my postings even better.  This book is broken up by months.

The beginning of the book In Plain Sight, the sixth in the years begins in the month of April.  Now given that this part of the book only has seven chapters, quite a bit happens in that time frame and all of it makes you want to just keep reading to find out what part each character will carry out in the rest of the book.

As you all know these books take place in Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming.  One of the local ranch owners, Opal Scarlett vanishes.  No one knows what happened to her and I really don't think that very many people care, in fact, they are happy.  She owns a pretty large ranch in Twelve Sleep and this ranch backed up to a river.  In response to her disappearance has caused all kinds of hiatus amongst her three sons, well really only two as the other is oblivious to it all.  Every spring and summer, guides would come down the river in their boats with customers and they would show  them the best parts of the river to fish.  Well, Miss Opal thought that she would make some money off of all of these guides.  She would charge them a fee to go down the river.  She new that it was illegal to do so.  As quoted from the book, "it was perfectly legal for anyone to float in a boat through private land as long as the boaters didn't stop and get out or pull the boat up to shore and trespass.  The land belonged to the landowner, but the river belonged to the public."  It was okay for the landowner to charge a fee for access to the river over the private property, but as I stated, it was illegal to charge for simply floating through private land.  So in order for her to bide by the law, she would stand on the bank near her home and cry out as if she was in trouble.  The guides would pull over and get out to see what was wrong and she would collect her fee for coming onto her land.  She would charge anywhere from $5 to $20 per person in each boat.  It was said that she collected enough money from the float fees, she would buy herself a new Cadillac at the end of every summer.  Now that is a lot of money.  Anyway, that is just one big part of the puzzle of this book.

Another part of the puzzle is a guy by the name of John Wayne Keeley.  He is making a trek from down south all the way up to Wyoming as he has some unsettled business to take care of.  He stole a car from Georgia to get to a penitentiary in Rawlins, Wyoming where he manages to kill someone with some tobacco laced with pesticide, steals a truck from an eldery couple all in hopes to find one person, Joe Pickett.

Now like I said, April was a pretty busy month with one person taken into custody for the disappearance for Opal Scarlett as he claims that he threw her in the river after she tied a piece of wire across the river slicing his neck open to get even with some of the guides going down river without paying their so called, "floaters fees."

Now we do learn in chapter 7 that the guy killed in prison, Wacey Hedeman was also the same guy that shot Joe's wife in the stomach back in the first novel by C. J. Box.

Can't wait to see how all these different pieces of the puzzle come together in the end.

Time tells all

We all know that when you watch a movie or read a good book, there are always new characters that are introduced.  Some are good, funny, interesting, while others we know are going to throw a monkey wrench in the story line.  There were several new characters brought into this story mixed in with the other mishaps and mysterious happens makes you wonder if they are good or evil.  Reading this book, I was always second guessing if they were part of the scheme of the story or what.  Well, let me tell you, it was awesome trying to figure that out. 

We all have had our moments of good and bad days with our jobs.  Well, I can guarantee with all the ups and downs and mysterious happenings in Joe’s work in a matter of a week makes our bad days seem like a cake walk.  Let’s see, where do I begin.  Of course he tries to really figure what is behind the suggested suicide of the former game warden, who is lurking around outside the statehouse that he is staying at, why is he feeling like he is in a fog lately?  Well, as you would guess it all leads up to a surprising ending as well as some shocking and some not so shocking.  He was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for about a week and in that time he managed to shoot and kill someone, figure out who killed, that’s right killed the game warden, and who was poisoning him the same way they did the former game warden.  Once again, like most murders, there is an ulterior motive, all so a group of business guys can build houses on a huge plot of land for rich people can live on, raise their own elk, deer, etc, and do their own kill.  That is so far unnatural that I am on Joe’s side for not allowing this to happen, not that it would have happened anyway as everyone is bound to get caught under Joe’s watch.  Now how is that for all in a day’s or in Joe’s case, week’s work.  This was a really good book and each one of his books keeps getting better and better.  I can’t wait to start reading the next book in the series to see what kind of trouble or shall I say murder, Joe solves.  Being that he was asked if he was going to come back to Jackson Hole, will hopefully be answered in the next book.  Only words will tell.

Summary II - Out of Range

As Joe starts his new assignment in a new county, first he must help his supervisor take care of a 450-pound grizzly bear that was named bear 304.  They got the bear into a trap, but what happens next is something that I would not want to encounter.  They shot the bear with a tranquilizer gun and waited ten minutes.  Neither one of them could tell if the bear was a sleep or not.  The bear's eyes were still reflecting the light and was still drooling.  Both Joe and his supervisor got out of the truck and went up to the bear trap.  They shone their flashlight on the bear and not only did the bear blink, but also turned his head away from the light, but it's when they realize that the lock on the gate didn't work that they were in some serious trouble.  The bear roared and charged through the gate with such force that gate blew open.  Now mind you Joe was on his way to a new job that he was to start the next day.  They spent the next three days driving around trying to find the bear.  Just when they thought their luck was over with, the receiver on the bear's collar chirped.  The bear came back.  They went out in search for the animal, but what Joe does being a game warden even surprises me.  He is standing ten feet away from the grizzly, staring him in the eyes.  He raises his shotgun, but Joe can't pull the trigger?  I could just imagine what that felt like and hopefully I won't have to ever find that out. 

Well the bear does get taken down, but by his supervisor.  Joe continues on his way to his new assignment and the new office is not happy that he is late.  Joe pretty much hits the ground running.  Not able to talk to his wife, who needlessly is not happy right now that he has not checked in yet.  Joe gets to his new office, which belongs to the old game warden who took his life and just can't put two and two together on what is wrong with the office, but sits down anyway to kind of figure out where Will left off.  He gets a phone call from the receptionist saying that there are some people setting up camp in the middle of an elk refuge.  As Joe approaches the camp it seems that these people are no strangers to the area.  The previous game warden has arrested them a time ro two for their antics.  They of course are animal rights activists who don't feel the need for hunters.  Knowing that they are out numbered with all the hunters, Joe offers to take them down to their car as the camping gear they had was not suitable for overnight camping.  I'm thinking they were actually hoping to get arrested for publicity on their part.